Steineded How sad is this?

Teringer An Exercise In Nonsense

Glucedee It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

Maleeha Vincent It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

SnoopyStyle Father Andrew Kiernan (Gabriel Byrne) is in southern Brazil to investigate a bleeding Madonna statue. He wants to do more investigating but his superior rejects him. In America, Frankie Paige (Patricia Arquette) is a single alternative hairdresser attacked by an invisible force giving her the signs of stigmata. She gets attacked again on the subway which comes to the attention of Kiernan.I love the brooding rain-soaked Gothic atmosphere at first but the movie goes nowhere. It's not scary for one minute. It's a lot of religious hogwash. It starts off with interesting tension but slowly fades away. Her attacks are slow-motion, pounding and repetitive. After the third time, I lose interest and it slowly grinds to a halt. It becomes another possession horror without anything new or interesting.

Girish Gowda A priest from the Vatican, Father Andrew Kiernan (Gabriel Byrne) is sent to Sao Paulo, Brazil to investigate the appearance of the face of the Virgin Mary on the side of a building. While there he hears of a statue of the Virgin Mary bleeding tears in a small town outside of the city after the death of another priest. Meanwhile, a young woman in the United States of America, Frankie Paige (Patricia Arquette) begins to show signs of stigmata, the five wounds of Jesus Christ.For a movie that was just made in 1999, Stigmata is quite dated. The cinematography is good, but some sequences are shot in a pop video style which was all the rage back in the 90's and it gets very ridiculous at times. I'm not a Christian, but the movie is anti-church, but not anti-god. There's a galore of conspiracy by the church which isn't exactly news to anybody. There's a lot of symbolism here though. I loved the water droplets scene which was symbolic of a non-believer like Patricia Arquette's character getting baptized after she slowly started to admit there might be a higher entity (I think all so-called 'Gods' were probably aliens or advanced human beings). It encourages you to question and ponder about what you believe is the truth.The quote: 'the Kingdom of God is inside you, and all around you, not in mansions of wood and stone. Split a piece of wood... and I am there, lift a stone... and you will find me' is somewhat similar to what the oldest religion (a very loose term to define it) in the world, Hinduism, which is rooted in Vedic tradition says - 'Aham Brahmasmi' - 'I am God' and thereby, everywhere, everything and everyone (trees, animals, humans, space among countless other things) has a God inside themselves and we just have to adhere to a moral code. I just find religions very intriguing. The main drawbacks of the movie are the music, the stylized shots and the very annoying Hollywood ending. Its an enjoyable movie with good performances by the actors though.7/10

Chris Smith (RockPortReview) Usually I don't do reviews of bad movies but when I originally saw "Stigmata" on DVD in the late 90s I actually thought it was pretty good. Now as I re-watch it over 10 years later I can definitely say, What the hell was I thinking? It feels dated, overly stylized and just plain bad all around.Taking place in the water logged city of Pittsburg, where it is constantly raining and dreary. Patricia Arquette plays Frankie Paige a hair stylist who becomes afflicted with the stigmata, or the wounds of Christ, after receiving a rosary from her mother as a gift. The rosary belonged to a recently deceased South American priest whose church recently had their statue of the Virgin Mary bleed. Frankie is an atheist and the stigmata usually only appears to extremely devout Catholics. The wounds of the stigmata cannot be transferred through physical items. Its also has nothing to with demonic possession, actually quite the opposite. We then meet Father Andrew Kiernan, a Vatican investigator of miracles. He is sent to meet with Frankie and we learn that she is 23 years old, yeah sure you are and I am Abraham Lincoln. They talk and she tries to seduce him, and he refuses for the most part. Later on she seems to be possessed by some evil spirit and writes all over her apartment walls. This is supposedly is a lost gospel of the Bible written by Jesus himself. It tries to be scary and horrific but epically fails.This train wreck was directed by Rufus Wainwright and like a lot of movies in the 90s it suffers from over stylization (AKA The Tarantino Effect). Style over substance and style just for the sake of trying to be "cool". It pays no attention to factual accuracy and just kind of creates it own thing on the fly. The musical score sound like something out of the 80s and not in a good nostalgic way. The entire look and feel of the film feels pretty dated and it wasn't even made that long ago. This is definitely a view at your own risk movie.

sango_miroku It has been years since I first watched this film, however, I never watched the trailer before hand. My dad suggested it to me shortly after its DVD release as I wouldn't have been old enough at the time.It was an incredible film that left me feeling tense, not scared at any points to recall, I really don't believe this film was meant to be a horror at all, so anyone reviewing it as "Not scary enough" doesn't really make sense to me... this film has a strong storyline with interesting characters, jumpy BOO scenes would ruin the atmosphere of the film.The alternative endings are interesting to watch too... I remember feeling teary at points in the film, it also felt rather psychological to me, which I love films like K-Pax and Mysterious Skin for as well. I think if you want more of an alternative "Horror" film, this is definitely a recommended one. But don't expect to feel scared...The only major fault I had was the trailer, which I watched recently when trying to explain to my boyfriend why this should be added to one of our "Movie nights". MY GOD WAS IT A BAD TRAILER. No wonder people felt disappointed/mislead. The trailer to me implies it will be a jumpy film and tries to be far too much like the Exorcist, when honestly it is nothing like The Exorcist in my opinion.I was incredibly shocked to see this only has a 6 rating... I was expecting to see around the 7.5-8 mark for this... So please, don't judge it by the trailer. Or the reviews about it not being scary or not a lot happening, it's not meant to be that type of film.It also has a fantastic soundtrack!